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Did Souls "no reload" spoiled other games for you?

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sure, i agree it's an ARPG.

i don't consider ARPGs to be RPGs though, as I know many others don't either.

do you realise how silly that sounds

all RPGs are hybrids. it's like calling fallout a turn based strategy RPG and then saying it's not an RPG either.

We'd probably be better off with a definition like "this game has RPG elements" than arguing if it "is a RPG" and then having to come up with a million subgenres to explain how Fallout and Wizardry belong in the same forum
 

RoSoDude

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As far as I'm concerned, this is the only post that matters when it comes to defining whether something is or isn't an RPG.

The pre-Bradley Wizardries do not allow you to to define and express your character's personality in a way that meaningfully changes the development of the story.

This seems like an arbitrary way to define roleplaying though. Why is roleplaying only valid in the context of a story? Why not in the context of a combat operation? In the latter, different units or unit types can play different roles. Scouts, snipers, assault troops, they all have their roles in the operation. In old-school CRPGs you also have different character types that have their roles both in the context of dungeon exploration and in combat. Mages, clerics, thieves, and fighters - and mixtures thereof - all play different roles. Again, if you don't read anything into the term "roleplaying", this is valid as well. The main feature that distinguished RPGs from wargames, historically, has been character customization (exploration too, but that is less important). RPGs, both PnP and computer alike, always have had elaborate character systems that allow the player to build their character or party in different ways.

The "role" has never in practice been a composite of in-game actions (let alone dialogue choices), but an abstraction (usually quantitative) fashioned from the possibilities offered by the ruleset and the character system, and RPGs have always been notorious for offering a large variety of such possibilities or options, at least compared to other genres. Of course, these possibilities have often also allowed different playstyles, but the mechanics of those playstyles are not exclusive of RPGs. For example, many RPGs allow for stealth mechanics which you can access - or at least only use optimally - only when you build your character as a thief, but the stealth gameplay as such is something you could find in stealth games proper, and in more sophisticated form. This is the case regardless of whether the stealth "minigame" is a full implementation of real-time virtual sneaking, or a heavily abstracted pnp simulation.

What I am trying to say is, RPG gameplay can be anything, it can be CYOA, wargame-style turn-based tactics, dungeon crawling, or stealth. That is not what matters, what matters is that the gameplay interactions are driven by a sufficiently elaborate character system. This means that, for example, Age of Decadence does count as an RPG, since the dialogue options and quest resolutions that are available to you are heavily dependent on your character build. On the other hand, interactive movies/novels such as Telltale games do not count as RPGs since dialogue options and resolutions do not depend on character build. In that sense, RPGs are a very unique genre since they are not defined by their gameplay components, or at least that is the case in so far as one does not consider character/party building a gameplay element, though it might well be taken as such, as it constitutes an implicit strategic layer that, even in games in which one does not have to micromanage this aspect too much, tends to be the most decisive factor in conflict resolution and the tactics available to the player at any given time.

This argument is further reinforced when one considers the definition of RPGs from a historical point of view, e.g. one defines RPGs synthetically, since in practice this is how most RPGs ever made have been; and as I pointed out initially, even analytically, there is nothing in the definition of roleplaying that discredits these traditions.

While he wrote this post to discredit the notion that it is only the possibility to influence the story that makes something an RPG, Ventidius also succinctly affirms that it is not the form of gameplay that defines an RPG, but rather the depth of its character building. From this viewpoint, I think it's clear that Dark Souls is an RPG, as you'll have a hard time arguing that its gameplay interactions are not "driven by a sufficiently elaborate character system". The number of different builds and playstyles that you can craft over the course of a normal playthrough attests to this.
 
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aweigh

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i would agree action RPGs are RPGs if JRPGs are also included.

since this is a Souls thread there probably won't be much resistance to this wild idea but over in General RPG land I think there are people who think that Souls games are RPGs but JRPGs aren't which I find hilarious because most JRPGs are more RPG than RPGs are RPG since there are more RPG elements in any random JRPG than there will ever be in any Souls game, or in any Action RPG.

i still maintain my very simple philosophy that if the combat revolves around dodge-rolling (ie twitch reflexes) and things like invincibility frames make up a a large part of the tactical layer then youre playing something that is more action than RPG, and appeals more to a general audience than the niche audience that prefers abstraction.
 
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aweigh

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that quote is alright but all of this has been discussed to death so many times. sea made many great posts about the nature of RPGs back in the pre-Kickstarter days.

that quote is a long-winded way of saying numbers-driven abstraction constitutes electronic RPGs which is fine because it conforms nicely with table-top roots. (war-gaming).

also I firmly disagree about Souls games having "a huge breadth of character advancement options"
 

Mastermind

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i would agree action RPGs are RPGs if JRPGs are also included.

since this is a Souls thread there probably won't be much resistance to this wild idea but over in General RPG land I think there are people who think that Souls games are RPGs but JRPGs aren't which I find hilarious because most JRPGs are more RPG than RPGs are RPG since there are more RPG elements in any random JRPG than there will ever be in any Souls game, or in any Action RPG.

i still maintain my very simple philosophy that if the combat revolves around dodge-rolling (ie twitch reflexes) and things like invincibility frames make up a a large part of the tactical layer then youre playing something that is more action than RPG, and appeals more to a general audience than the niche audience that prefers abstraction.

abstraction is primarily an element of turn based strategy, not RPGs. Some RPGs use it heavily, mostly because TBS is the grandfather of RPGs, but it's not a necessary element. resident obnoxious autist DraQ has waxed poetically on an ideal RPG that uses hardcore physics engines for years. IMO the only true RPG fan is the one who plays it because they like developing their own characters and then taking them out for a spin in the game world. That is as close to a pure RPG fan as you will get. Everyone else is a pretender and would probably just be happier playing a pure version of a proper genre. IE: storyfags should stick to adventure games, action fags to action games, strategy fags to strategy games, etc. RPGs rarely deliver the same quality as a pure non-rpg. It's only those of us who want to shape our characters in detail that are cursed to forever play this shitty genre and never be satisfied.
 

Ventidius

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As far as I'm concerned, this is the only post that matters when it comes to defining whether something is or isn't an RPG.

The pre-Bradley Wizardries do not allow you to to define and express your character's personality in a way that meaningfully changes the development of the story.

This seems like an arbitrary way to define roleplaying though. Why is roleplaying only valid in the context of a story? Why not in the context of a combat operation? In the latter, different units or unit types can play different roles. Scouts, snipers, assault troops, they all have their roles in the operation. In old-school CRPGs you also have different character types that have their roles both in the context of dungeon exploration and in combat. Mages, clerics, thieves, and fighters - and mixtures thereof - all play different roles. Again, if you don't read anything into the term "roleplaying", this is valid as well. The main feature that distinguished RPGs from wargames, historically, has been character customization (exploration too, but that is less important). RPGs, both PnP and computer alike, always have had elaborate character systems that allow the player to build their character or party in different ways.

The "role" has never in practice been a composite of in-game actions (let alone dialogue choices), but an abstraction (usually quantitative) fashioned from the possibilities offered by the ruleset and the character system, and RPGs have always been notorious for offering a large variety of such possibilities or options, at least compared to other genres. Of course, these possibilities have often also allowed different playstyles, but the mechanics of those playstyles are not exclusive of RPGs. For example, many RPGs allow for stealth mechanics which you can access - or at least only use optimally - only when you build your character as a thief, but the stealth gameplay as such is something you could find in stealth games proper, and in more sophisticated form. This is the case regardless of whether the stealth "minigame" is a full implementation of real-time virtual sneaking, or a heavily abstracted pnp simulation.

What I am trying to say is, RPG gameplay can be anything, it can be CYOA, wargame-style turn-based tactics, dungeon crawling, or stealth. That is not what matters, what matters is that the gameplay interactions are driven by a sufficiently elaborate character system. This means that, for example, Age of Decadence does count as an RPG, since the dialogue options and quest resolutions that are available to you are heavily dependent on your character build. On the other hand, interactive movies/novels such as Telltale games do not count as RPGs since dialogue options and resolutions do not depend on character build. In that sense, RPGs are a very unique genre since they are not defined by their gameplay components, or at least that is the case in so far as one does not consider character/party building a gameplay element, though it might well be taken as such, as it constitutes an implicit strategic layer that, even in games in which one does not have to micromanage this aspect too much, tends to be the most decisive factor in conflict resolution and the tactics available to the player at any given time.

This argument is further reinforced when one considers the definition of RPGs from a historical point of view, e.g. one defines RPGs synthetically, since in practice this is how most RPGs ever made have been; and as I pointed out initially, even analytically, there is nothing in the definition of roleplaying that discredits these traditions.

While he wrote this post to discredit the notion that it is only the possibility to influence the story that makes something an RPG, Ventidius also succinctly affirms that it is not the form of gameplay that defines an RPG, but rather the depth of its character building. From this viewpoint, I think it's clear that Dark Souls is an RPG, as you'll have a hard time arguing that its gameplay interactions are not "driven by a sufficiently elaborate character system". The number of different builds and playstyles that you can craft over the course of a normal playthrough attests to this.

Dark Souls has always been a hard case for me. It pretty much stands at the threshold as far as I am concerned. These games obviously do have an abstract character system that allows you to build your character in different ways, indeed it arguably gives you more options and is more detailed than games that are uncontroversially RPGs, like Gothic 2.

In that discussion with Roguey I reached the conclusion that RPGs are games where the character system has a greater influence on the success or failure of actions than in other genres, which means that even if an RPG allows for neglecting the character system and beat the campaign, the returns to scale provided by understanding and mastering the system are much greater in an RPG than in a non-RPG. The example I used was Pillars of Eternity, where most builds can beat the game, but only optmized ones can do so efficiently, especially on PotD. Meanwhile, in an action game like Far Cry 3 it makes little difference whether one invests points in the skill tree or not, the game is not significantly more difficult either way. It is not a question of a game having charsystems in isolation, but also of the progression.

If one uses this criterion, then, the question usually is where the threshold is. This is not easy to answer in the abstract and probably should be judged on a case-by-case basis. There are clear cases of RPGs such as Wizardry and clear cases of action games such as Half-Life 2, but there are also hard cases like Dark Souls. In the Soulsborne games mastering the character system and running effective builds can make the game significantly easier, to the point in which it feels like SL 1 runs are a different difficulty setting, yet such SL 1 runs are eminently possible. RPG or not? There is a good case to be made either way, especially since being a master tactician can compensate for being a poor systems tinkerer even in TB and RTwP RPGs.

My personal take has always been that, while excellent, these games are not RPGs (especially Bloodborne, and DS2 has the best claim of being one). Lately, however, I have not been so sure, and have started to think that they do cross the threshold where the returns to scale to optimizing are RPG-like.
 

Damned Registrations

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If souls games aren't RPGs then I assume you're also throwing Deus Ex and Elder Scrolls out the window? And Diablo of course.
 

Ventidius

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that quote is a long-winded way of saying numbers-driven abstraction constitutes electronic RPGs which is fine because it conforms nicely with table-top roots. (war-gaming).

Ouch. To be fair though, I attempted to explain why these abstract quantified systems were so important and also expound in concrete terms what their nature was. Relying on history is fine and perfectly valid as far as I am concerned, but I'm the kind of guy for whom more analytical clarity never hurts. Also, quantitative abstraction is not the only way of executing a valid role system as I understand it, as I will explain below, though it has long been - and might still be - the only realistic one.

i would agree action RPGs are RPGs if JRPGs are also included.

Regardless of how one defines JRPGs the idea that they are not RPGs is borne out of the same prejudice that rejects Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord and Jagged Alliance 2 as RPGs, and thus has been discredited a long time ago, regardless of whether people here realize it or not. Unless we are here talking of Action JRPGs such as NieR and Dragon's Dogma, then we run into the same issues we have to grapple with in the case of all ARPGs and it has nothing to do with Japan.

i still maintain my very simple philosophy that if the combat revolves around dodge-rolling (ie twitch reflexes) and things like invincibility frames make up a a large part of the tactical layer then youre playing something that is more action than RPG, and appeals more to a general audience than the niche audience that prefers abstraction.

In Dark Souls 2, there is a stat called Adaptability that controls your iframes while rolling, thus making dodging itself into a factor driven by the character system. You could have real time dodging physics in an ARPG that are regulated even more strictly than they are in Dark Souls 2, to the point that rolling might be next to useless or even impossible to roll without investing in a stat or rolling a certain class. The presence of real-time dodging is not, by itself, the problem. What we are really discussing here is not design principles but cheese. Finding, usually inefficient, ways - and believe me doing butter knife damage while rolling like a moron in DS is inefficient in the extreme - to move forward in the campaign without tinkering with the charsystem is also possible in Turn-Based: In Divinity Original Sin 2 you can focus-kill a guy in an enemy squad, teleport out of a fight, and kill another, rinse/repeat. Same principle as rolling, but turn-based (except it is even easier because rolling requires some twitch-skill). Cheese is bad gameplay and even worse design, but it does not have much to do with the question of what genre a game belongs to.


abstraction is primarily an element of turn based strategy, not RPGs. Some RPGs use it heavily, mostly because TBS is the grandfather of RPGs, but it's not a necessary element. resident obnoxious autist DraQ has waxed poetically on an ideal RPG that uses hardcore physics engines for years. IMO the only true RPG fan is the one who plays it because they like developing their own characters and then taking them out for a spin in the game world. That is as close to a pure RPG fan as you will get. Everyone else is a pretender and would probably just be happier playing a pure version of a proper genre. IE: storyfags should stick to adventure games, action fags to action games, strategy fags to strategy games, etc. RPGs rarely deliver the same quality as a pure non-rpg. It's only those of us who want to shape our characters in detail that are cursed to forever play this shitty genre and never be satisfied.

This is an important point, and upon it hinges the answer to the question of whether Action RPGs are a worthwhile venture for the industry at all. Using physics to model different play styles within the same engine is, in my view, a viable way of implementing a role system, and it is the only really serious alternative to traditional quantitative role systems (whatever Tim Cain is going on about with "geometric shapes" is probably not one). We might call it, by way of contrast, the qualitative role system, because roles are expressed as qualitative possibilities within the physics of the engine rather than mathematical formulae. That said, I suspect you are underestimating the role of abstraction. The main difference between a game with a qualitative system to one with a quantitative one is not the lack of abstraction. What I believe you should never get rid of is some form of character system, because then you don't really have an RPG but a game like a single-player Overwatch that simply supports a lot of different playstyles with different physics. There should be some way of actually controlling the progression and overall configuration of our character in such games, which you admit, but I doubt whether this can be done without some abstraction, even if only a perk system that unlocks certain physics. Of course, one could go the full simulationist route and implement a fully-fledged, under-the-hood, learn-by-doing system. But even thus removing the manipulable factor from the "meta" element of stats, the latter would still have to be exist in some way in the form of a feedback provider, because the player would still need to have such feedback in order to build his character in certain ways instead of others, and in order to plan and strategize such builds.

In my view what makes Morrowind great is that, along with Daggerfall, it was perhaps the greatest leap forward in terms of establishing this alternative. As we know, however, this approach to RPGs has since stagnated, streamlined by Bethesda themselves and largely ignored by most of the industry even as they rush to copy Bethesda games by introducing "open worlds" and action combat in the most cargo-cultist way possible, completely missing and failing to develop what is it that made Morrowind a worthwhile alternative to quantitatively abstract games to begin with. Perhaps the only one that pushed the envelope in this regard was Dragon's Dogma, as I argued in another thread. For the most part, however, while Action RPGs that used the qualitative approach were once promising, the way that school has ultimately developed in the Mass Effects and Witchers of the world represents objective decline in comparison to Turn-based and RTwP games. That's why, while I don't entirely agree with it, I understand the sentiment that ARPGs were a mistake.

For me the bottom line on this is that, as I said above, quantitative abstraction has long been the only way to implement a valid role system, while the qualitative approach employing engine diversifcation pioneered by Daggerfall and Morrowind provided the one serious alternative to it. However, due to the failure of the latter approach to really take hold and evolve without resulting in cargo-cult decliners, it might well be that, realistically, quantitative abstraction is still the only way to go.
 
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Mastermind

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the point of removing abstraction isn't getting rid of the character sheet, but making sure the character sheet represents physical attributes rather than abstractions of them. For example, strength could determine the physics of your sword swing (with stronger characters swinging harder and faster) rather than give a damage bonus to an abstract calculation.
 

Ventidius

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the point of removing abstraction isn't getting rid of the character sheet, but making sure the character sheet represents physical attributes rather than abstractions of them. For example, strength could determine the physics of your sword swing (with stronger characters swinging harder and faster) rather than give a damage bonus to an abstract calculation.

Ah, I see, you were referring to abstraction in the game interactions such as combat (and presumably skill checks).
 

Ventidius

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Getting back on topic, I have to say I don't understand Soulsborne fans who insist that there is something about these games that is uniquely groundbreaking or paradigm changing. I mean, I love these series, mind you, but at best they can be described as eclectic rather than innovative. Fundamentally, the Dark Souls series is an eccentric combination of a heavily slowed-down and more methodical version of Japanese hack-and-slash combat conventions, exploration structured in the Metroidvania style, some classical dungeon crawling RPG tropes thrown in for good measure (the legacy of the King's Field series) and some RPG elements in the form of a simple but intuitive character system that offers a surprising amount of variety in playstyles, even compared to Action RPGs. I have always found it odd that people consider it a combat-centric game, let alone "the hard game". It is not a particularly hard game for anyone with gaming experience, even if it does comfortably dodge the charge of being easy, and the combat itself is by no means among the best: hack-and-slashes, fighting games, shmups, and many other genres beat it easily in terms of the mechanical depth of combat. To me what sets these games apart and makes them so good is how the weave together all of these elements into a consistent experience that is all around very solid and with very few weak links, and especially the way it links together its slow, methodical combat with exploration: what makes the game most challenging and mechanically interesting is not individual fights themselves, but the tightly designed encounters which simultaneously integrate many factors such as the environment, positioning, traps, etc. into puzzles in real time. As I put it in another thread:

That said DD could also learn a bit from Dark Souls, one thing that Dark Souls does very well - apart from the depth of the combat mechanics - that I rarely see in DD is designing tactical encounters. Like, for example, in Dark Souls areas are designed with the explicit intent to screw you: you have enemies in plain sight that act as bait, guys hiding in ambush waiting to skewer you, campy fucks shooting and throwing crap at you, sometimes environmental hazards and traps, cramped environments and limited field of view, and all of those factors and more engineered to operate in unison according to the Dungeon Master's sadistic plan to bar you from getting through with your estus filled, if at all. Though to be fair, this works for Dark Souls due to the nature of its exploration as a dungeon crawler.

There ain't no such thing as a fair fight in Souls. It is not a duelist's game. I would also add that it is not only the emphasis on dungeon exploration that permits such tactical encounters, but also the slow, ponderous, and high-lethality nature of the combat which makes it more deliberate that most action games. In fact, Dark Souls is probably the closest a real time game has come to providing 'encounter design' in the sense we use the term for tactical RPGs. Choices regarding the order in which enemies are engaged, whether to press onward or secure the flanks, scout the area ahead, etc tend to be more rewarding in Dark Souls than in the combat genres mentioned above which rather emphasize pitched battles and quick reflexes. There is definitely an element of that in Souls, but through the encounter design it is elegantly enmeshed into the dungeon exploration itself. Like in old-school crawlers, the dungeon is the enemy, but the interesting spin on the formula comes in the way that enemies themselves are the dungeon.

The dungeons themselves are nowhere nearly as complex as they are in, say, old-school blobbers, but as I mentioned, the way that the dungeon exploration itself is structured is more like that of a Metroidvania than Wiz-like crawlers in that there are puzzles within puzzles within puzzles that offer layered complexity rather than the discrete instances of expansive complexity found in the Wizardry formula. What I mean by this is that in Metroidvanias you have individual maze-like areas that are puzzles in their own right, but those areas themselves in turn are part of a broader puzzle that is the interconnected world. But that is not all, apart from those two layers of puzzles there is yet another, which is the combination, within individual areas, of platforming, combat, and physical puzzles that are solved through interactive systems(like the Grapple beam, Morph Ball, etc, in Metroid). Dark Souls lacks the platforming and physical puzzle element but compensates for it through the tactical puzzles that I mentioned above and that work through the combination of enemy placement, traps, and disorientation. Also, like Metroidvanias, DS emphasizes freeform gameplay which means that sequence breaks, branching exploration, and different possible solutions to situations are ubiquitous. Therefore, while the net complexity in level design does not ultimately match Wizardry-likes or fully-fledged Metroidvanias like the Metroid series, it is still an impressive achievement when one considers that this design also incorporates very solid combat, a serviceable character system and resource management.

Oh, I haven't discussed that last aspect, which I also think is executed in an impressive way. I think the combination of Estus management and bonfire checkpoints is a clever approach(and FWIW, surprisingly not unimmersive) for dealing with the issue of resource managament that sometimes plagues both RPGs and Metroidvanias. The checkpoints themselves are a riff on the old save stations and not very innovative, and while the idea of automatically replenishable consumables seems novel, it actually isn't that different from spells that are recharged on rest. But due to the way this system is impemented(nigh impossibility of obtaining healing from downed enemies), the result is a well-balanced resource management component that enhances dungeon strategy further, not to mention that it is one of those rare cases in which consumables are implemented as an essential part of the game's design rather than a crutch uncomfortably tacked in. To be fair though, this point largely applies to the Dark Souls series itself, as Bloodborne and DeS use a more generic - and IMO degenerate - system of consumables.

Ultimately if someone said that Dark Souls is not excellent at any particular aspect of gameplay, but merely good at many things, I would say fair enough, though I would point out that a game that does so many things well like DS does is extremely rare, and not only in our days. Abominations of bloated design are almost always the result of such ambitious projects, rather than something as well-rounded as Dark Souls. Beyond that, I would also point out that what makes the series special is the sum of the - already good - parts or how it brings them all together in such a seamless and consistent way. And it is not only the synergies between the dungeon design, the tactics, the combat, the character building, and resource management, but heck, even the lore, story and world building pile in and fuse themselves into the mechanics in an impressively interactive way. An example, the way the game, like PS:T, acknowledges that your character dies and keeps coming back which indicates the unison of the narrative with the "ironman" mechanic, or the way that hollows are implied to have been guys exactly like you, but who gave up and went mad, acknowledging the hostile nature of the world's design, of which they themselves are a part. All of this without getting into the NPC questlines.

The cohesive nature of the game's overarching design along with the quality of every individual aspect of it are what I have always found to be the most impressive things about this series, much more than the combat or the much vaunted difficulty (greatly exaggerated in any case). If anything the games I find most comparable to the Souls series are not hack-and-slashes like Ninja Gaiden, but rather 3D Metroidvanias like the Metroid Prime series (a tiny niche within a niche in and of itself), and even then the differences are substantial. These games are not particularly hard, or particularly innovative, and they might well not be RPGs, what they definitely are, however, is very well designed games.
 
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Damned Registrations

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I don't think I've really heard anyone claiming the series is super innovative and ground breaking; but it is (or was before it started a fad) a refreshingly difficult AAA game in a sea of hand holding. It's not at all surprising that pretty much an entire generation's first experience with this kind of gameplay was this series. If you started playing games in the late 90's, there's a very good chance everything you played was a joke on it's default settings.
 

Ventidius

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I don't think I've really heard anyone claiming the series is super innovative and ground breaking; but it is (or was before it started a fad) a refreshingly difficult AAA game in a sea of hand holding. It's not at all surprising that pretty much an entire generation's first experience with this kind of gameplay was this series. If you started playing games in the late 90's, there's a very good chance everything you played was a joke on it's default settings.

I think that's kind of the point though, that there are a lot of us who did not start playing games in the late 90s, which is why so many end up rolling their eyes at gamers from the younger generation who can't stop going on about how this game blew their minds with its challenging gameplay. That said, I agree that the game was definitely cut above the contemporary AAA crop in this respect. I would add the proviso, however, that it was not so much the high skill ceiling of the game's mechanics that was remarkable in this context, but the skill floor. Mainstream hack-and-slashes from that time, for example, required much more skill to master, but Dark Souls was probably harder to learn. And since casuals, by definition, are not out to master - or if they can avoid it, even learn - game mechanics, it is easy to see why Dark Souls came as such a shock. For the first time in their lives a game had the audacity to look at them in the eye and tell them: "git gud".
 
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Ash

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There are definitely plenty that look to Dark Souls as considerably groundbreaking...but it doesn't surprise me. Despite it being pretty standard Japanese action and RPG game design (with some minor innovations), the games it shares similarities with are old now, and console games. So this means die hard PC-only types and modern gamers will most likely not be aware that many defining "souls-like" elements were once a golden standard.
The modern gamers in particular will typically only have had absolute shit as a point of reference, so when they discovered Souls it must have blew their little minds.
 
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True, skill ceiling for these games wasn't that high. Although, the 'skill' if you can call it that, of awareness, is something very few games even reward, let alone require. What will save your life in this series more than anything else is stopping to look at ceilings, noticing background noises, seeing blood on the floor, and so on. Even other games aping the series tend to miss that aspect; they put in cheap kills without the small details to make you feel like a moron for getting caught. And in your average game devs make a point of making things obvious, it's just generally considered superior design to do so as it caters to the lowest common denominator.

I think the freedom of where to go was also exceptionally well done in Dark Souls in particular. There's about 8 different bosses you can fight first after reaching firelink shrine, and you don't even need the master key or any glitches to do so. I'd say around half of those are extremely unlikely for a first run, but that still leaves quite a few that are pretty viable and a huge amount of ground to cover off the beaten path, if you're feeling rebellious. It's on par with games like Might and Magic, which is a pretty huge time gap.
 

Ash

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If you started playing games in the late 90's, there's a very good chance everything you played was a joke on it's default settings.

:retarded:

Late 90s had loads of notably testing games, even on default settings, what are you smoking? Hell I just posted a bunch above. If you were vying for Battletoads tier difficulty then I'm sorry to let you know that you're insane.
If one started in the mid 2000s however, then it's likely you know nothing but unengaging gameplay, no challenge and having your hand held every step of the way.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Well, the only games you posted up there we either released before 1995 or I haven't played them, so, point made I suppose. I was mostly thinking of the mainstream stuff- Mario, Zelda, Sonic, Final Fantasy. Those series all had roots in some pretty difficult gameplay and somehow got easier over the decades despite having a skilled fanbase. If you're just starting to play games you're probably playing something really popular and don't have some massive collection. Of course there's been decently challenging games released every year, but they dwindled hard, and just because they're challenging, doesn't make them worth playing. I doubt many of you have played Eirgeiz or Vanguard Bandits, for example.
 

Ash

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Yeah sure, those particular series did decline in difficulty a little come the late 90s...ocarina of time in particular I just couldn't play because of that fucking fairy and other such handholding decline. they've nothing on classic Mario, Link to the Past etc. Sonic was always relatively easy (aside from the original, which was moderate). But that's like four IPs of thousands, and all are targeted at children...not that that excuses decline. But yeah, not much decline back then, and even then those games were still notably more demanding than modern shite.
 
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Silva

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There is another factor people are missing here - none of the Souls "gitgud" precursors had such a vivid and well developed world giving off such a sense of place as Lordran and it's lore. No one played Castlevanias, Battletoads or Metroids and immediately visited tabletop RPG forums wishing to find actual game-books for exploring those worlds more in-depth. No one spent hours discussing the game world and lore on forums (or youtube) for those games.

What it says to me is the series is not only a very good sum of gameplay elements but of different genres too. It was one of the stronger proponents to me for considering placing these kind of action games in the same umbrella as RPGs, all because of the way it made it's setting a breathing, alive place.

Oh and about the "whats an RPG", for me it's a simple commercial categorization with little relevance. Games like Bloodborne, Thief and Deus Ex offer more "role-playing" for me than any Baldurs Gate ever did, for example.
 
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Ezekiel

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There is another factor people are missing here - none of the Souls "gitgud" precursors had such a vivid and well developed world giving off such a sense of place as Lordran and it's lore. No one played Castlevanias, Battletoads or Metroids and immediately visited tabletop RPG forums wishing to find actual game-books for exploring those worlds more in-depth. No one spent hours discussing the game world and lore on forums (or youtube) for those games.

What it says to me is the series is not only a very good sum of gameplay elements but of different genres too. It was one of the stronger proponents to me for considering placing these kind of action games in the same umbrella as RPGs, all because of the way it made it's setting a breathing, alive place.

Oh and about the "whats an RPG", for me it's a simple commercial categorization with little relevance. Games like Bloodborne, Thief and Deus Ex offer more "role-playing" for me than any Baldurs Gate ever did, for example.
I like all the Souls games, and I think most of them have good stories in spite of what I am about to say, but I think item descriptions and such are lazy storytelling techniques. I wonder how the character you're role-playing as learns this information. How do they know the Silver Pendant was presented to Artorias for facing the Abyss or that the Purging Stone is a secret treasure of Arstor, Earl of Carim? At least the descriptions aren't long-winded, like the stupid audio logs and journals that have infested all of the AAA games. (Reminds me of that running joke in South Park: Stick of Truth, about the guy who feels compelled to make audio logs and doesn't know why.) But, by the time I played Dark Souls III, I stopped caring and stopped reading most of the item descriptions. I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that FromSoftware designed all the models and visuals first and came up with the lore afterwards. It also doesn't help that any time you pick up an item, you have to search through a long inventory to find it before you can read the description. Makes me not wanna bother.
 

Silva

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Ezekiel , actually I didn't think of item descriptions when elaborating my previous post. The first thing that came to mind was the world (and levels) design and the now famous environmental storytelling those levels do. If the game only had the initial cutscene and NPC dialogues and cut out all item descriptions, it still would be incredibly remarkable, I think.

Something that contributes to that is the absence of maps and objective markers etc. forcing you to memorize every corner of the world of Lordran. Also: the way you can see future/past levels in the distance from where you're now. All this together gives a fucking good sense of place to the world.
 

Ezekiel

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Ezekiel , actually I didn't think of item descriptions when elaborating my previous post. The first thing that came to mind was the world (and levels) design and the now famous environmental storytelling those levels do. If the game only had the initial cutscene and NPC dialogues and cut out all item descriptions, it still would be incredibly remarkable, I think.

Something that contributes to that is the absence of maps and objective markers etc. forcing you to memorize every corner of the world of Lordran. Also: the way you can see future/past levels in the distance from where you're now. All this together gives a fucking good sense of place to the world.
I agree. That's why I said that they still have good stories in spite of what I had to say. Much of the important information is communicated through visuals and dialogue. It's just that people usually go on and on about how deep the lore is, usually meaning the item descriptions.
 
Self-Ejected

unfairlight

Self-Ejected
Joined
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No because I didn't play it.
We still need to genocide soulsfags. You'd be first.
 

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